Evolution in the Fourth Round

Introduction

According to theosophy, our earth globe is one of
twelve globes that make up the earth planetary chain. These twelve interlocking
spheres are composed of different grades of consciousness-substance, but interpenetrate
to some degree and form a unitary group. Our own globe (globe D) is the most
material globe, and exists on the lowest of the seven planes of our hierarchy.
Each globe exists on seven subplanes, from material to spiritual (these being
relative terms). The higher, nonphysical realms of our own globe, along with
all the higher globes of the earth-chain are beyond the range of our physical
senses.

Schematic representation of the twelve globes of a planetary chain.

A planetary lifespan or manvantara lasts 4.32 billion years, and is
followed by a planetary rest period or pralaya of equal length. A manvantara is
divided into seven rounds or great tidal waves of life. Every round repeats on a higher scale the
evolutionary work of the preceding round, and brings into full expression one of the seven
element-principles. The first three and a half rounds comprise the arc of descent, during which the
globes and
their inhabitants undergo a process of progressive materialization. The second half of a manvantara
comprises the arc of ascent, characterized by etherealization and spiritualization. Our physical globe
originated some two billion years ago in an ethereal state, and gradually grew more dense and
material until a few million years ago when the ascending arc began.

Ten kingdoms or life-waves evolve in and on the globes of a planetary
chain, and indeed compose them. They are the three elemental kingdoms, the mineral, plant, animal,
and human kingdoms, and the three spiritual or dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. At the end of a
planetary manvantara, the monads or consciousness-centres comprising the life-waves return to their
spiritual home, enriched with their evolutionary experiences.

On each globe in each round, the monads in each life-wave manifest in
suitable forms and pass through seven main stages of evolutionary development. In the human
kingdom, these seven stages are called root-races or humanities. The root-races
overlap: a new race begins to emerge in the middle of the previous one. The same monadic
individuals embody in each root-race, with the exception of those who are unable to advance
sufficiently to continue into the next round, who enter an early ‘nirvana’ of low degree.

On any globe at any time, one kingdom dominates, and the bulk of its
monads embody on that globe. Each kingdom stays on a globe for many millions of years, and
passes seven times through all the globes in succession during each embodiment of a planetary
chain. When a life-wave departs from a globe, it leaves behind its most advanced representatives
(also called shishtas, or ‘remainders’). When it returns to that globe in the next round, the incoming
monads reawaken these astral root-types, which begin to materialize and
differentiate into a variety of stocks appropriate to that kingdom’s evolution.

Theosophy teaches that ‘The Universe is worked and guided from
within outwards’ (SD 1:174), and that ‘all things had their origin in spirit – evolution having
originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the
Darwinian theory’ (SD 2:170/190). Physical forms originate from astral prototypes, which are
themselves reflections of the spiritual archetypes or ‘ideas’ left from previous evolutionary cycles. Far
from being a random process, evolution is the result of the impulses arising in the inner constitution
of worlds and entities. It involves the building of ever-fitter vehicles for the expression of the latent
powers of the spiritual monad.

The following brief sketch deals mainly with the evolution of humanity on
globe D during the present, fourth round of the earth’s evolution.

First root-race

The fourth round began some 320 million years ago
towards the end of the Precambrian era, a period marked by tremendous geological
upheavals. The first of the seven root-races or humanities was a race of astral
entities and appeared in mid-Paleozoic times, some 150 million years ago. As
the seven classes of human monads from globe C started to arrive on globe D,
they awakened the corresponding classes of shishtas, which began to multiply
in number. The first subrace of the first root-race therefore consisted of seven
groups, seven embryonic astral humanities, evolving on seven different zones
of the first continent, situated around the north pole.

For, while it assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its
forefathers or ‘creators’ were all divine beings – though of different classes
or degrees of perfection in their hierarchy – men were nevertheless born
on seven different centres of the continent of that period. ...
[T]heir potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms,
and future characteristics, were very different. ... Some superior,
others inferior, to suit the karma of the various reincarnating monads
which could not be all of the same degree of purity in their last births in
other worlds. This accounts for the difference of races ... (SD
2:249)

The earth on which the first race lived was more ethereal than it is today,
but relatively hard and condensed in comparison with those nonselfconscious ‘human’ protoplasts.
They had huge translucent or transparent bodies, ovoid though somewhat fluid in form, with no bones
or organs, and no hair or skin. They slowly grew more solid, but remained ethereal until the end.

The race was sexless and propagated by fission: a large portion of the
body separated itself and grew into a duplicate of its parent, much as happens with living cells today.
In contrast to the huge and highly ethereal cells of the first race, our physical bodies today begin their
existence as a microscopic cell or egg, a speck of gelatinous protoplasm, which slowly
hardens and grows into the human form.

Second root-race

The second, Hyperborean root-race (a continuation of the first) was
semi-astral, but grew denser and more opaque with each passing age. Towards its end, it became
more
gelatinous and filamentoid in structure, and developed the rudimentary beginnings of bones and
organs, hair and skin. Although still more or less ovoid in form, it began to show the first outlines of
the later human form. However, towards its end, its bodies passed through many curious, part-animal
forms.

The second race was asexual and reproduced by gemmation or budding,
a method of reproduction still found in certain unicellular organisms (e.g. certain bacteria, yeasts, and
protozoans). This was a repetition in the small of the method of reproduction of the first race. A
swelling would appear on the body of one of these entities, and as it grew it became constricted near
the point of junction with the parent body. Eventually, the remaining filament would break, thus
freeing the bud, which then grew into another individual similar to its parent. At about the midpoint of
the second race, these buds increased in number, and became what might be called ‘spores’ or
‘seeds’. At certain seasons many of these buds would leave the parent body, as do the spores or
seeds of plants today. Many might perish, but many others would successfully grow into beings with bodies like those of the parents which gave them birth.

The first two races were not fully human as they had no selfconscious
minds. Their consciousness was like that of someone in a daze or deep daydream. They were guided
by spiritual instinct, and were mentally much like little children.

Early third root-race

The third, Lemurian root-race appeared during the Triassic period of the
Mesozoic era (which began some 44 million years ago). The jelly-like substance of the second race
had now become tender flesh composed of cells. Some of the filamentoid parts grew more
cartilaginous, and finally became bones, and others became the muscles, nervous system, and blood
vessels. The nuclei that existed in the bodies of the second race condensed into true organs. The
evolution of physical humans out of the astral races of the early Lemurian age can be likened to the
materialization of ‘spirits’ (astral entities) in the seance room.

The early third root-race was hermaphrodite or androgynous. This
method of reproduction is still found in certain representatives of the lower kingdoms, e.g. in most
flowering plants and in invertebrates such as worms, snails, and slugs. Practically all antiquity taught
that mankind must have had bisexual ancestors if for no other reason than that each sex possesses
rudiments of the reproductive organs of the other sex.

In the earliest stages of the third race reproduction took place by
budding, which developed into ‘egg-laying’: vital cells were exuded from the outer parts of the body,
and collected together to form huge ovoid aggregates or eggs. To start with, the drops of vital fluid
were exuded from nearly all parts of the body. Later a single large cell was exuded from a functional
part of the organism, which was the root of the later reproductive organs.

Egg-laying is still found in birds and certain reptiles today, and even in
humans the method of reproduction is still essentially the same. The human germ cell is an egg,
though microscopic in size in comparison with the large eggs of the third race, and it is incubated in
the womb, within a protecting wall of solid flesh and bone, rather than developing outside the body.
The period of ‘incubation’ is now nine months rather than several years, and the new-born babe is not
as independent as the ‘newly hatched’ infant of the third race.

The first, second, and earliest third races did not eat as we do now, but
took material into the body for nutrition by osmosis, in much in the same way as our lungs draw
nutrition from the air.

The first root-race and much of the second knew no death as we
understand it; each generation melted into the next. Towards the end
of the second race, its individuals fell asleep, as it were, and faded out, and this was the beginnings
of what we now call death. With the third root-race, death became the rule, since the bodies became
sufficiently solidified and individualized to die when their store of vital energy had been exhausted.

Origin of the animals

The beginning of the fourth round some 320 million years ago coincided
with the appearance of the first multicellular organisms or metazoans in the fossil record. But they
were relatively few compared to the incredible proliferation of marine organisms that occurred in the
early Cambrian (some 70 million years later). Since the ‘Cambrian explosion’, almost no new basic
anatomical designs (or phyla) have appeared in the animal world. This sudden radiation resulted
from the reawakening of the astral shishtas or root-types by the monads arriving on our globe from
globe C – their numbers being relatively few to start with but swelling rapidly as time went on.

From the start of the fourth round until the midpoint of the planetary
life-cycle, some 4.5 million years ago, the evolutionary trend was downwards into matter,
resulting in a
profusion of new species, which developed the fundamental designs activated at the start of the
round into a variety of increasingly specialized forms. However, the middle of the cycle marked the
beginning of the ascending arc towards spirit, and henceforth more and more animal monads will
tend to pass into nirvanic rest as they will not be able to evolve sufficiently along psychological
and spiritual lines. The midpoint of the fourth round also marked the ‘closing of the door into the
human kingdom’ – meaning that no more animal monads can enter the human kingdom during the
rest of the planetary manvantara, except for certain ape and higher simian monads.

The first ethereal representatives of all the stocks below the mammals
– the birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates – originated mainly in the preceding
(third) globe-round, many hundreds of millions of years ago. The higher mammals originated from mankind
in the present globe-round, during the latter part of the second root-race and the early part of the third
root-race, in the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic. Ethereal, prehuman mankind ‘threw off’ from
itself the germs or seeds of the future animal stocks by the process of budding or gemmation
described above. If the vital germs or buds fell from the portion of the parent body which had
become the seat of the reproductive organs, they would reproduce a second human, but if they fell
from some other part of the body, they would often, if the environment was favourable, grow into the
beginning of new animate stocks, which then proceeded to develop and specialize along their own
lines.

In those remote times, as today, many of the atoms, molecules, and cells
composing the human body were guests, drawn to those bodies by karma, and thereby
helping to build them. After residing in the body for a time, they leave and their place is take by
others. Some of the vital cells thrown off by early humans were used by entities that evolved into the
higher mammals. H.P. Blavatsky says that the drops of vital energy which oozed out of the human
body were scattered far and wide, and ‘used by nature for the production of the first mammal-animal
forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and nature never leaves an atom
unused’ (SD 2:170).

In those early days, before the selfconscious intelligence of the third race
had begun to unfold, the dominance of the human life-fluid or soul-essence over the cells and
life-atoms
composing their primitive, more ethereal bodies was far weaker than it is today. Consequently,
when any of the cells freed itself from that control, it instinctively followed the path of self-expression,
as each cell is a storehouse of unexpressed types. A further reason why the cells developed along
their own lines was that all entities were then running down the arc of descent, which is the period of
the evolution of matter and the involution of spirit, and therefore all stocks from the ‘human’ down
were under the natural urge to evolve new bodily forms.

The bodies of the animals physicalized before those of ethereal
humanity, and the androgynous animals likewise separated into male and female before the human stock.

Later third root-race

Hermaphroditism died out in the middle period of the third race.
Individuals began to be born with the predominant characteristics of one or the other sex, until finally
only unisexual individuals were produced. With the separation of the sexes, the present method of
reproduction ensued. It was at about the same time that the awakening of our selfconscious minds
began and that human bodies became fully developed and physical. The early stages of human
evolution are recapitulated by the growing embryo, and it is interesting to note that the distinction of
sex does not appear until the third month of growth.

The Lemurians were endowed with a third eye at the top of the head. It
was in fact the first eye, the two front eyes developing later. It is also known as the eye of Shiva, the
wisdom eye, or the deva eye. It was originally an organ of both physical and spiritual vision.
With the development of increasingly material bodies and the separation of the sexes, the eye began to lose its
power. It gradually petrified and finally disappeared from the outward anatomy of humans in the
middle of the third subrace of the Atlanteans. The remaining witness to this eye is the pineal gland, a
pea-sized organ in the brain, situated beneath the posterior part of the corpus callosum. Every class
of species was originally hermaphrodite and one-eyed. Today, certain cold-blooded vertebrates have
an outgrowth of the pineal gland which forms an eyelike structure (known as the pineal eye) at the
top of the head. This eye is now atrophied, as in humans.

Even today the third eye is partially functional in humans as an organ of
spiritual vision, but it has a difficult time, mainly due to the activity of the two eyes that superseded it.
G. de Purucker writes:

As time passes the two eyes will grow slowly more perfect in function, but will recede in
importance; and the ‘first eye’ will come again into its own. It did function in other rounds, during
the third and even the second, weakly during the first; because during the first round the monads
which we call egos now were then spiritual and semi-spiritual beings, as it were in a
samadhic condition on this plane ... (Man in Evolution, 203)

The pineal gland is destined to function again in the distant future as the organ of our seventh and
highest sense.

Humanity’s selfconscious mind began to awaken once our physical forms
had become sufficiently developed to express our latent mental powers. This important event is
referred to as the ‘incarnation of the manasaputras’ (or ‘sons of mind’). These spiritual entities
are our own higher selves (our higher human or manasaputric monad), and passed through the human
stage in a previous cycle of evolution. With selfconscious intelligence came the power of choice and free
will, and as humans gradually sank further into matter, a struggle emerged between the spiritual and the
animal in man.

The awakening of mind began among the karmically ready stocks during
the fifth subrace of the third root-race in the later Mesozoic era, some 18.5 million years ago.
However, manas (the fifth principle) will not be fully developed until the end of the fifth round. By the
end of the seventh round, our lower human monads will have
become higher human monads, and will enter the lowest of the three dhyani-chohanic
kingdoms, assuming that we run the race successfully. It will then be our duty to act as
manasaputras for the human monads in the next manvantara, which are currently animal
monads.

Selfconscious human individuals began to appear even in the first,
second, and early third root-races. In the middle of the third race, before the general
manasaputric ‘descent’, the selfconscious forerunners of the human race, under the influence of
the spiritual consciousness or ‘silent watcher’ of our globe, gathered together to form a focus of
spiritual and intellectual light. This was the origin of the Brotherhood of Adepts, which has been in
existence ever since. The adepts or mahatmas are the guides and helpers of the human race,
and the custodians of the ageless wisdom.

The last two subraces of the Lemurians (or Lemuro-Atlanteans) built
cities, cultivated the arts and sciences, and sowed far and wide the first seeds of civilization under
the guidance of their divine instructors and their own awakened minds. Lemuria was centred in the
Pacific Ocean. Most of it sank towards the end of the Cretaceous period (which
ended about 8 million years ago).

Fourth root-race

The fourth, Atlantean root-race developed bodies far coarser than our
own, because it was in the middle of that race, some 4.5 million years ago, that the bottom of
the arc
of descent was reached and matter reached its fullest development. Since then the matter of both
the globe and its inhabitants has begun to slowly etherealize and become more refined, and this
process will continue as we progress along the ascending arc, until the end of the seventh round,
when the globe will have returned to the highly ethereal state that prevailed in the first round.

The Atlanteans produced some of the most brilliant civilizations of a
purely material character that this globe has seen. On the whole, however, they were unspiritual, with
strong material instincts. Many of them worshipped the dark and evil powers of nature, and misused
their innate psychic powers for selfish ends – practices which were opposed by the wiser among
them.

The bulk of Atlantis was submerged and destroyed in the Miocene epoch,
following which the fifth race began to increase rapidly in numbers. Portions of Atlantis, however,
lingered on into later times. The large island of Ruta in the Pacific Ocean sank some 850,000 years
ago, the smaller island of Daitya in the Indian Ocean sank some 270,000 years ago, and Poseidonis,
a small Atlantic island about the size of Ireland, was submerged 11½ thousand years ago.

Size, senses, and speech

‘Humans’ are said to have been of titanic size during the early races and
to have gradually diminished in stature ever since, a process which can also be seen in the animal
and plant kingdoms. The bodies of the first two races were over a hundred feet tall. The third
root-race was 60 feet tall initially, and 20 to 25 feet at the time of Lemuria’s destruction. The
Atlanteans in their heyday were 20 to 30 feet tall. Man’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet ever since the
third subrace of the our present (fifth) humanity, and has continued to decline ever since.

The relatively solidified bodies of the late second and early third races
could conceivably have left fossils, and this is even more true of the later third race and the fourth
race. But since then, tremendous volcanic, seismic, and other cataclysmic events have taken place;
lands have sunk beneath the oceans and new lands have been upheaved in many parts of the globe.
Only a few fossils are likely to have survived these events. Moreover, cremation is said to have been
universal until some 80-100,000 years ago. However, many remains of humans up to 12 feet (4 metres) tall
have been found in recent times, and there are also intriguing reports of semihuman/apelike
creatures from 7 to 15 feet tall existing in remote areas till the present day (see The ape-ancestry myth, section 4).

At the present stage of evolution, humans have five senses. Theosophy
teaches that there are really seven, or even ten, senses, though all are specializations of the interior and
unifying source of them all. Each of the seven root-races brings into full functional activity one of the
seven senses, though it also manifests, very imperfectly, the as yet undeveloped senses. The first
root-race evolved the sense of hearing, the second touch, the third sight, the fourth taste, and the
fifth smell. The reason our ears can hear eleven octaves of sound while our eyes can see only one
octave of light is because the sense of hearing was developed at a far earlier stage of our evolution.
The sixth and seventh root-races will evolve two further senses with their appropriate organs.
‘Hunches’ are a forerunner of the sixth sense, and intuition is a forerunner of the seventh sense.

The first race had no speech, and indeed did not need it since it lived in a
kind of daydream. The second race had a sound-language – chant-like sounds, largely
onomatopoeic, composed of vowels alone, signifying danger, pleasure, etc. In the early part of the
third race the noises became a sort of language, though it was only a slight
improvement on the sounds in nature. Towards its end the third race developed monosyllabic
speech. Before that they communicated through thought transference, though thought was initially
very little developed in nascent physical mankind. The fourth race developed agglutinative
languages, while the fifth developed inflectional languages.

Monkeys and apes

The lower simians, the monkeys, arose from interbreeding between a
mindless or unselfconscious stock of the third root-race and a high beast stock, probably during the
Jurassic period of the Mesozoic. The anthropoid apes resulted from interbreeding between an
unprogressed Atlantean stock and the simian descendants of the earlier miscegenations, towards the
end of the fourth root-race, in the Miocene epoch.

The ‘humans’ responsible for the acts which gave rise to the monkeys
were instinctual and devoid of selfconsciousness and hence the miscegenation was not a crime. The
distance between the ‘humans’ and animals concerned was not yet very great and hence fertile
unions were possible. The Atlanteans who later repeated the act were aware of what they were doing
and the act was therefore one of intentional bestiality. Even then, humans and animals were not far
enough apart to prevent a fertile union.

In far past geological times both these simian stocks resembled their
human half-parents in much fuller measure than do their present-day descendants, the living
monkeys and apes. The earlier stocks were much nearer in time to the dominant human influence in
their heredity, while the living simians show the effects of specialization away from that influence
over the intervening millions of years.

G. de Purucker says that the original apes were looked upon askance by
the more evolved humans of that time but were tolerated because they had glimmerings of our active
minds. They were virtually thinking entities of a lower type.

The most human of these apes died out, partly because the Atlanteans, realizing the sin of their
own less evolved men, made vigorous war upon them, wars of extermination; and also because
the milieu, the surroundings, were not conducive to the continuance of this partly-human
partly-animal race. Only the least progressed of the apes were allowed to live by the Atlanteans; and
the apes today are [their] descendants ... (Studies in Occult Philosophy,
123)

The egos which took embodiment in the original monkeys and apes were
those which had not quite reached the human stage. The apes are destined to become human beings
of a low grade before the end of this round, and again in the fifth round. This does not mean that
ape bodies will evolve into human bodies, but that the monads currently tenanting ape bodies will
take on
bodies among the lowest human stocks. The rest of the animals will gradually die out as progress up
the ascending arc continues, and will reappear in the next manvantara.

Thus humans and apes did indeed have a common ancestor – but that
common ancestor was man himself, in his earlier, more primitive form. The darwinian ape-ancestry
theory is contradicted by abundant evidence – in the form of stone tools, incised bones, and skeletal
remains – showing that human beings existed in the Pliocene, the Miocene, and even in early
Tertiary times, millions of years before our supposed apelike ancestors are thought to have
appeared. Nowadays, this evidence is either ignored or dismissed out of hand. (See SD 2:10, 675,
678, 686, 714fn, 740; The ape-ancestry myth, section 3.)

A comparison of the skeletal and muscular features of living apes and
humans shows that apes have developed a more complex and specialized structure, while humans
have preserved a primitive mammalian simplicity, with only the cerebrospinal system, necessary for
the manifestation of selfconscious intelligence, being highly developed. As for the more primitive
hominid fossils that have been discovered, rather than being our direct ancestors, they may have
existed alongside advanced civilizations (some of them on now submerged islands and continents),
just as civilized and primitive peoples coexist today.

Fifth, sixth, and seventh root-races

The fifth, Aryan or Indo-European humanity became a distinct root-race
about one million years ago in Central Asia, and like all major new races, received guidance from
divine instructors. Since then, a series of migrations have taken place, and many civilizations have
come and gone. We are now approaching the middle of the fifth race.

The European stock of races, with their highly developed physical
intellectuality, is currently in its kali-yuga or dark age. This age of rapid material progress will last for
another 427,000 years. The European races have been steadily rising since the downfall of the
Roman Empire, and will continue to do so, with various smaller shocks, for another 6-8000 years.
There will then be a rapid descent leading to a great European catastrophe of nature in about 16,000
years. This period will see the submersion of the British Isles, most of France, Holland, part of Spain,
and much of Italy, and will be preceded by premonitory signs, such as slow subsidence of the coast
and major earthquakes.

The seeds of the sixth root-race are already being sown, largely in the
Americas, and will become fairly numerous towards the end of our kali-yuga. Hermaphroditism will
again appear, but in a more refined form. Children will be produced by kriyashakti, i.e. by will
and imagination – passively in the sixth race, and consciously and actively in the seventh. The flesh
of the sixth root-race will be very tender and soft, and that of the seventh root-race will be almost
translucent. These races will be smaller than us in size, but greater in intellect and spirituality.

Earlier and later rounds

The evolution of the first race of the fourth round recapitulated the first
round, the second race the second round, and the third race the third round. Likewise, the fifth, sixth,
and seventh races will be a faint foreshadowing of evolution in the fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds.

During the first round all the classes of monads helped to build the
foundations of the globes, under the guidance of the dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The kingdoms
were largely undifferentiated initially. In a sense, the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms are
the unconscious ‘off-throwings’ of primeval humanity, just as humans are the offspring of the gods.
The mineral kingdom separated off in the first round, and first plants and submammalian creatures in
the next two rounds. The earliest mammals appeared at the end of the third round.

Even during the first round there was organized intelligence on earth, and
not merely mindless entities. In addition to the dhyani-chohanic kingdoms, there were thinking
human beings, though their bodies may have been quite different from those we have now. They
were few to start with, but increased in number in the succeeding rounds. There was a time in the
third round corresponding to the descent of the manasaputras in the fourth round, a time
corresponding to the arrival of sex on earth, and a time corresponding to the disappearance of sex
later in this round.

The fifth round will see the full development of manas (mind), the sixth of
buddhi (intuitive wisdom), and the seventh of atman (the inner divinity). If we make the grade
successfully, we shall become buddhas at the end of the sixth round, and dhyani-chohans at
the end of the seventh. We shall then have an ovoid form, of refined spiritual substance, like a
garment of dazzling light. At the end of the planetary manvantara, the lower principles of the
earth chain will die and disintegrate, and a long pralaya or planetary rest period will ensue. After this
period of nirvana, we shall become the guides of the humanity and lower entities on the
next embodiment of the earth chain.

Before the last pralaya, our monads had been evolving on the former
embodiment of the earth, which is now our moon. On the moon chain, our present lower human
monads were animal monads. At the end of the seventh round of evolution on the earth-chain, our
lower human monads will have become higher human monads (manasic or manasaputric
monads), and will embody in the lowest of the dhyani-chohanic kingdoms on the following
embodiment of the earth-chain. In future manvantaras they will become spiritual monads and finally
divine monads. They will then have completed the evolutionary journey from unselfconscious
god-spark to selfconscious god – but only as regards our earth chain. In the far distant future, our
divine monads will pursue a similar evolutionary pilgrimage on other planetary chains, in other solar
systems, other galaxies, etc., for in the boundless fields of infinitude there are always new worlds of
experience in which to become selfconscious masters of life.